


In These Flames

by Z A Dusk (snakeandmoon)



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Has PTSD (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flashbacks, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, M/M, Nightmares, Sad with a Happy Ending, The Burning Bookshop, in which crowley learns he doesn't have to keep things bottled up, the past can't hurt them any more
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:14:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22623877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snakeandmoon/pseuds/Z%20A%20Dusk
Summary: In which Crowley wrestles nightmares about a burning bookshop, and eventually learns that he doesn't have to shoulder the pain alone. Anathema and Tracy try their best, but let's face it, Crowley needs his angel.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 32
Kudos: 298





	In These Flames

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [Mira Woros](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miraworos) for the brilliant! beta!

The first time it happened, Crowley was bewildered. He was no stranger to nightmares – most of his involved the sensation of boiling sulphur sloughing the flesh from his limbs – but this one was different. This one didn’t fade when his eyes shot open. He could still smell the smoke drifting ghost-like around his bedroom, and hear the mocking fire crackling in his ears. He sat frozen in the dark, willing them to dissipate. Despite always keeping his room at the perfect temperature, he could feel goosebumps rising on his arms, and he shivered so hard his teeth chattered.

Ridiculous. With a frustrated sigh, Crowley switched into his snake form and spent the rest of the night curled under his state-of-the-art heat lamp. 

When the next night found him cowering in the dark, willing away the remnants of smoke and terror once more, he was angry.

By the third night, he was ready to condemn every someone-forsaken candle, fireplace, and chiminea in the whole blessed city straight to hell.

On the fourth night, Aziraphale politely enquired whether Crowley might consider staying the night again some time soon. Since the body swap, Crowley had become accustomed to a new standard of living. One in which he spent every evening sprawled on a comfy old sofa with his head resting in the lap of a warm and affectionate angel. An angel who could never seem to keep his eyes off Crowley or his hands away from his hair or face for more than two minutes at a time. As midnight came around, he would retire to snooze peacefully in the flat above the bookshop, while Aziraphale read downstairs. They hadn’t quite talked about what next, but their new routine was soft and comfortable and Crowley craved it. But he couldn’t bring himself to tell Aziraphale about the nightmares. 

Or more correctly, he didn’t want to lift the lid on the box labelled “things I felt when I thought you’d been ripped from the earth.”

So he mumbled something about needing to tend the plants, trying not to choke on self-recrimination at the badly hidden hurt in Aziraphale’s voice.

The fifth morning found Crowley stalking down the street to Madame Tracy’s flat and slamming his hand against the doorbell as if it had personally offended him.

“Oh dear. I think you need to come in for a nice cup of tea.”

Madame Tracy ushered him upstairs and bustled into the kitchen as if she was used to demon callers. Crowley paced around the room, weaving between the half-packed boxes labelled with “bathroom,” “kitchen,” “psychic para-fer – ye ken wit I mean,” and “good china.”

“Do sit down, dear. You’re making me nervous.”

Crowley perched awkwardly on the edge of a pink velvet-covered chair, and tried to protest that he didn’t want tea. 

“Now then, what brings you here, dear?” Madame Tracy asked, blithely ignoring his protests and plying him with good English breakfast tea and home-baked shortbread.

“You know about witchery and all that, right? Got anything for nightmares?”

Apparently Madame Tracy’s favourite remedy was asking Crowley approximately a billion questions, which he skirted with a snarl. But this wasn’t the would-be psychic’s first rodeo, and she knew how to tease answers out of a recalcitrant conversational partner. Even if said partner was an ancient demon with enough chips on his shoulder to start his own snack bar. Two hours later, Crowley reeled out onto the street, blindsided by emotions, but somehow lighter for having admitted that every scorching dream reminded him of the moment he thought Aziraphale was dead.

That night he startled awake with what anyone else would call a scream (Crowley wouldn’t concede to that). The image of Aziraphale dead among the flames was so vivid that Crowley dragged himself out of bed just to convince himself he was awake. He staggered against the wall, sliding down to lie on the floor, tears streaming down his face until his throat was raw with crying.

The next morning he threw himself into the Bentley with a growl and gunned the accelerator, telling himself it was just as well Aziraphale wasn’t there to complain at his speeds. And he absolutely didn’t think of him as he tore up the now-familiar rode to Tadfield. He definitely didn’t remember pinning a certain angel to a certain wall. And the nonexistent memory was having no libidinous effect on him whatsoever. Obviously.

“Crowley. The coffee’s just brewed.”

Of course she was expecting him. Even without the prophecies, Anathema’s senses were uncanny. Crowley sprawled in a heavy wooden chair beside the oak dining table and gratefully gulped the coffee in one go.

“It’s good to see you, too.”

Crowley slanted an annoyed look at her, but truth be told, he liked the witch. She said what she thought, and she was whip-smart. 

“Look, you know about nature and shit, right? Got any remedies for nightmares? Can you magic me up something in your cauldron?”

Anathema shook her head, but her lips twitched as she suppressed a smile.

“Where’d you get your information, Crowley? Shadwell? My cauldron is strictly for soup and healing tea. I could probably ‘magic’ you up a helpful brew, though.”

Three hours, two more coffees, and a very healthy plate of cheese and cucumber sandwiches later, and Crowley was exiting Jasmine Cottage with bunches of dried lavender, a bottle of frankincense oil, six bottles of fresh-made chamomile tea, a salt lamp, and a chunk of amethyst the size of his fist.

“Crowley?”

He turned. Anathema was leaning against the garden gate with the same piercing look she’d worn at the airbase.

“Have you told Aziraphale about this?”

Crowley was still shaking his head and muttering as he stashed everything in the Bentley’s passenger seat. Tell the angel, indeed.

When he got home, he left the supplies in the car, planning to drop them off at Madame Tracy’s on his way to the bookshop. Well, he might keep the tea. But she was welcome to the crystals and salt lamp. The message light was blinking on his answering machine, so Crowley hit the button.

“Dear boy, I was thinking. If you don’t want to come over tonight, I quite understand. I realise that of course you might need some space, I do apologise. We don’t have to spend every night together if you would rather not.”

The bookshop door nearly parted company with its hinges as Crowley flung it open five minutes later and thrust a very large bouquet of roses into Aziraphale’s arms.

“I like, I mean love, yeah, love spending more time with you but there are things I can’t say, but it’s not actually you at all and I’ll see you soon, alright?”

Then he was heading back to the Bentley before Aziraphale could respond. But Crowley had underestimated the determination of an angel left with a frustrating demonic conundrum. 

“Crowley! You can’t just … what are you doing?”

Crowley’s hand on the door handle was suddenly covered by a warm soft angelic hand, the owner of which was looking at him as if he’d just suggested a skiing holiday in hell. He opened his mouth in the hopes that a suitable answer would helpfully tumble out, but then the angel’s gaze fell on the passenger seat of the car. Letting go of Crowley’s hand, he walked around the Bentley, opened the door, and retrieved the lavender and amethyst. Holding them up, he gave Crowley the sort of bemused look normally reserved for customers who actually wanted to buy a book.

“My dear boy … what’s all this?”

His lips were twitching with the effort not to laugh. Crowley drew in the sort of breath that usually portended a sharp comment, when suddenly he felt very, very tired. What need was there for it, any more? Aziraphale had walked to hell and back for him. He didn’t have to hide this from him.

“Come home with me, angel?”

Twenty minutes later Aziraphale, who had sat with Anathema’s supplies on his lap and nary one sarcastic comment on his lips all the way to Mayfair, was sitting at Crowley’s minimalist kitchen table, sipping a cup of Darjeeling.

“I thought you were dead.”

Crowley said, apropos of nothing. Aziraphale took an unsteady breath, but gestured for him to go on.

“I thought they’d killed you. Thought I’d never see you again. Was honestly thinking about wandering into the next church and tipping the font of holy water over myself. Couldn’t do that though, could I. Had to hang on just in case there was hope. In case I found you somehow. Or you found me.”

“And I did.” Aziraphale said gently, resting his hand on top of Crowley’s. “But what has this to do with why you’re avoiding me?”

“Been dreaming about it. Keeping waking up frozen to the bone and everything smelling of smoke.”

“I don’t follow, dear boy. Nightmares are a normal reaction to trauma, are they not? If you were at the bookshop I could hold you.”

Something about the open, artless, sweetness stormed up to Crowley’s walls and sledge-hammered them. Nights’ worth of tension broke all at once, making him slump forward until his arms were on the table and his head rested on his arms. Great humiliating sobs made his shoulders heave and his breath hitch, and oh Satan he’d never cried in front of the angel before. Aziraphale scooted his chair closer and started rubbing his back solicitously, which only made the demon cry harder.

“I bloody love you,” he choked out between sobs. “I've always bloody loved you, and that-- when it-- and I didn't know. Angel, I didn't know what to do..."

There was a moment of silence, during which Crowley’s heart tied itself in a knot. What a way to say that for the first time. He raised his head slowly, his heart now trying to break out through his throat. Aziraphale was staring at him as if Crowley had just hung a brand new star in the sky just for him.

“I love you, too, dearest,” he said quietly, each word tinged with a touch of angelic power that made Crowley’s skin tingle. 

Aziraphale cupped the demon’s cheek in his hand and smiled with more love than Crowley thought he could bear at once.

“Now, how are we going to tackle these dreams?”

Step one, it turned out, was Crowley being willing to sleep in the bookshop, where Aziraphale could hear his nightmare-shouts. Never had he felt more raw or vulnerable than at 4:00 AM, perched on the edge of the bed, shuddering with cold and choking on unshed tears as Aziraphale held him.

That first night, he sat rigid and afraid and refused to bend to the angel’s touch.

The next time, he raised a hand and held onto Aziraphale’s forearm, as if the angel could beat the dreams away.

Several times after that, he turned and pressed his face to his best friend’s shoulder, though the rest of his body remained tense, a sharp contrast to his usual serpentine easiness.

A month later, Aziraphale was woken from one of his rare sleeps by a confused and tearful demon stroking his face and mumbling “it happened again.” This time, Crowley didn’t sit up, ramrod straight. He stayed in bed and let his angel hold and comfort him.

Six months later, the dreams were becoming much less frequent. Crowley would wander sleep-mussed downstairs, curl into Aziraphale’s lap, and speak quietly of drifting ash and acrid smoke and searing heat that frightened him far more than the brimstone of his fall. Then he would return to bed and get up the next morning for breakfast as if nothing had happened. He never mentioned the things he said in the wee small hours, and Aziraphale knew better than to bring them up.

In month seven, over their evening repast of Crowley’s delicious home-cooked paella, Crowley said quietly, “you could read in bed, right?”

Aziraphale always did his night reading in bed after that.

In month nine, nearly a year since the airbase, Crowley turned over in his sleep and wrapped his arm around Aziraphale’s waist, resting his cheek contentedly against the angel’s chest.

“You’re here.”

He mumbled, and Aziraphale felt him smile.

The dreams never came again.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for taking the time to read! If you enjoyed it, let me know :)
> 
> You can also find me on [Tumblr](azfell-and-his-demon.tumblr.com)


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